USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Nanticoke > History of Hanover Township : including Sugar Notch, Ashley, and Nanticoke boroughs : and also a history of Wyoming Valley, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania > Part 16
USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Ashley > History of Hanover Township : including Sugar Notch, Ashley, and Nanticoke boroughs : and also a history of Wyoming Valley, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania > Part 16
USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Sugar Notch > History of Hanover Township : including Sugar Notch, Ashley, and Nanticoke boroughs : and also a history of Wyoming Valley, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania > Part 16
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40
There are no other lots in the second division that deserve special mention. The most of those along the line of the third division at or near the foot of the mountain are pretty well under- mined now by L. & W .- B. Coal Co.'s Sugar Notch Mines called No.
.
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HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
9 and No. 10. No. 10 Mine-a slope and breaker-is on the east side of the cross-road that runs from the Back Road at the old house of Andrew Shoemaker to the Middle Road at the old house or home of Samuel Burrier, the breaker standing only eight or ten rods east from the old Jacob Garrison house.
The Nanticoke branch of the Lehigh & Susquehanna R. R. passes west down this hollow between the hills to Wanamie and to Nanticoke.
THIRD DIVISION LOTS.
THESE LOTS WERE SURVEYED AND DRAWN SEPTEMBER 12, 1787. .
No. I. Drawn in the name of Lieut. Lazarus Stewart, who had been slain in the Wyoming Massacre nine years before. In 1802 it was certified, if these lots were ever certified to anybody, to Matthias Hollenback. It descended to his son, George M. Hol- lenback, and afterwards-about 1865-became the property of William R. Maffett. No clearing or cultivation was ever done on this lot. It lies within the coal area on the north side of the Little Mountain, and is now the location of the Hanover Coal Company's mines-a tunnel, shaft and breaker.
No. 12. Drawn in the name of William Stewart. He was alive at the time. It appears on the map now as certified in the name of John Robins. It was partly tillable land. It is also on the mountain side mostly, and in the gap called Sugar Notch, is mostly coal land, and belongs to the Sugar Notch Mines No. 9 of the L. & W .- B. Co. It joins No. I on the east side.
No. 13. Drawn in the name of John Donahow. It ap- pears on the map as if certified in 1802 to Abraham Adams. It was tillable land; was owned and worked by Andrew Shoemaker till about 1838. After several transfers it became the property of the L. & W .- B. Co. at Sugar Notch and their Shaft No. 9 and breaker stand on the edge of it close to the lower end of the Gar- rison lot No. 13-second division. Close to this breaker stands the Lehigh Valley Railroad depot at Sugar Notch on the lower or west end of the Garrison lot. A half mile or more west in this hollow commences the steep grade on the L. V. R. R. to ascend the mountain, and curving around in Newport township and skirt- ing the side of the Big Mountain reaches Fairview to the south-east of this depot.
12
178
HISTORY OF HANOVER.
No. 14. Drawn in the name of Robert Young. Certified in 1802 to Abraham Adams, transferred to Conrad Knoch, de- scended to his heirs in Germany in 1828. It is owned in Germany. The N. J. Coal Co. had a mine and breaker here in 1866: It is now leased to the L. & W .- B. Co. and coal is mined from it through both No. 9 and No. 10, Sugar Notch.
No. 30. Drawn by or in the name of John Robinson. It is situated within the lines of the gore of the second division. Was tillable land like the second division, and coal land- was the same size, 55 acres. It was certified in 1802 to Benjamin Perry, sold to John Hoover, who lived there to very old age and died there, in 1866. It belongs now, and since 1864, to the L. & W .- B. Coal Co.
No. 31. Drawn by Robert Young. He sold it Dec. 20, 1788 to Andrew Millitt, Millitt sold it to Elisha Blackman April 14, 1792, for £25=$66.6623. It was sold by the heir of Elisha Blackman in 1853 to Jonathan J. Slocum, and after his death came into the ownership of the L. & W .- B. Co.'s Sugar Notch Mines No. 9.
No. 21. Drawn by William Stewart. It is at the top of the mountain at Solomon's Gap. Part of the buildings around Fairview Station are on this lot, but the station itself is beyond the line of Hanover-in Wright township. The Plane-House at the head of the L. & S. planes, is in Hanover. The employes of the two railroads that pass into and out of the valley of Wyoming through this elevated Gap, number several hundred, and to pro- vide for them, houses, stables, round houses, shops, stores, taverns, saloons, etc., had to be built and has given some value to this land; but the most if not all of the employes of the railroads, on the top of the mountain live beyond the present line of Hanover and beyond lot No. 21.
THE PUBLIC LOTS.
No. 29, 30 and 31-First division of lots and Nos. 5, 6 and 16 second division were leased out, from the earliest times, for longer or shorter periods. At first the term was only for seven years; but by 1789 leases of these lands were made for terms as long as ninety- nine years, and some were perpetual,-"as long as trees grow and water runs." A Bond-as it was called-was given by the lessee, covering the land. The interest, together in some cases with a
1
8
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HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
bushel or two bushels of wheat, (or the value of it) was collected every year by the Proprietors' Collector. This was the interest on the amount fixed as the value of the land at the date of the exe- cution of the lease. In some cases the lessee paid the price fixed as the value of the land at once, and his lease in such cases was drawn for a nominal rent or interest, as, for a "pepper-corn" a year. These leased lands were bought and sold and transferred just as any other lands were, and the persons from whom the interest was collected were constantly changing. It is difficult if not impossible now to tell where the land of each of the persons named on the Collector's list below for the year 1816 lay.
Conrad Line probably had the two lots Nos. 5 and 6-second division.
Rufus Bennett had part of lot 29-first division.
Edward Inman had parts of lots 30 and 31-first division.
Frederick Crisman had part. of No. 29-first division. Cris- man had part of a six rod road and built the Red Tavern on it.
John and George Sorber had part of six rod cross-road between lots Nos. 15 and 16-first division, at the Middle Road.
These bonds were collected, paid, canceled and probably de- stroyed about twenty years ago-say 1865. It is understood that patents have been taken out of the land office for all these lands now.
LESSEES OF THE PUBLIC LANDS.
Interest due on the bonds belonging to the Proprietors of Han- over township from the lessees of the public lands of the town- ship, for the year 1816.
Copy of the Collector's list and warrant.
Interest on Rufus Bennett's bond $9.44 and one bushel of
wheat
. $ 10.44
Interest on Conrad Line's bond $32.32 and one bushel of
wheat 33.32
Interest on Edward Inman's bond $22.24 and two bushels of wheat 24.24
Richard Dilley 12.00
Edward Inman 10.08
Nathan and Abner Wade 6.00
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HISTORY OF HANOVER.
Administrators of Frederick Crisman, dec'd. . 7.92
Joel B. Burritt and Philip Abbott . 5.28
Richard Dilley . 13.83
John and George Sorber . 2.40
Edward Spencer . 17.00
Nathan and Abner Wade . 1.20
Benjamin, Jacob and Ebenezer Brown
2.01
$145.72
"To Elisha Blackman, Collector of the public money for the Pro- prietors of Hanover township. You are hereby authorized and im- powered to collect the sums above annexed to their respective names as soon as the law will admit and pay the same to the Pro- prietors' Treasurer.
"December 30th, 1816.
"JONATHAN DILLEY, " ISAAC HARTZELL, Committee."
" JAMES S. LEE,
In olden times and down to as late as 1864, the schools had the benefit of this fund, but by an act of the legislature the proprietors' trustees were authorized to collect these bonds in full and pay over principal and interest to the Central Poor District. It was done. Thus the paupers have the benefit of it now.
A Bloomery Forge is one where the iron is made in a forge fire direct from the ore. Bog ore was found in Newport and in Hanover.
The Bloomery Forge in Newport on the Newport Creek, a few rods beyond the Hanover line, was originally built by Nathaniel Chapman, Joseph Beach and Mason Fitch Alden. The date of its erection is not known, but it was previous to the Wyoming Mas- sacre-previous to January, 1777, for at that date Mason Fitch Alden enlisted in Captain Ransom's company in the Revolutionary army. In 1783 the buildings were in ruins, according to a German traveler of the time. Nathaniel Chapman died and the administra- tor of his estate sold his interest in it in 1791. At that time Capt. Andrew Lee owned one-half interest on it and Chapman the other half. The land or lot adjoining and containing a mill seat, within Newport township along the Hanover line, had been bought of William Stewart by Capt. Andrew Lee and Nathaniel Chapman in
18I
HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
1789. In this same year, 1789, Washington Lee bought of John Comer and wife of the Manor of Livingston, N. Y., lot No. I, second division, Hanover: "bounded on the east by Wm. Stewart's land, on the west by the mill lot, on the north, or in front, by the river Susquehanna, and on the south by lands now or late of James Stewart," "which lot was purchased by the said John from one James Caffron," "and is supposed to contain thirty-one acres." The consideration is thirty pounds New York Currency == $75.00. This would indicate that Coffrin's Mill was no longer in existence and that Lee's Mill, as it was afterwards known, had been built some time previous to 1789, in Newport township.
THE ANCIENT TOWN OF NANTICOKE.
In 1793 William Stewart, who had taken up his residence in Hanover, Dauphin County, Pa., (formerly Lancaster) who owned lot No. 27, first division, at Nanticoke, had it surveyed, plotted, streets laid out and lots marked,-sold, between February 9 and March 14, 1794, thirty-six lots. He called the town Nanticoke. There was Spring Street, Walnut, Pine, Broad, Market, Chestnut and Water streets, and the Great Road, and Strawberry Alley. The lots numbered from I up to at least 136, and contained from 6712 perches to 88 perches each. The price was invariably £3 15s. == $10.00.
The names of the purchasers were :-
Jared Nelson, John Martin,
William Wood,
John Field,. Henry Stein, Michael Killinger,
George Miller,
George Stein, John Rickle, Jr.,
Michael Palm, Thomas Peas, John Harrison,
Daniel Herman, Christian Srauder,
Peter Heimbrick,
_Thomas Beady, Zekiel Bamboc,
John Fox,'
Michael Moyer,
James Ainsworth, Jacob Miller,
John Ewing, George Hegetshwiller William Allen,
Elizabeth Stein, Henry Thomas, Jacob Miley,
John Palm, Jr.,
Peter Withington, George Sloan,
Jonathan Hancock,
Ebenezer Felch,
Jesse Fell,
Wyllys Hide, Peter Steele,
Christian Beck.
All of these, except Hancock, Hide, Felch, Steele, and Fell, were residents of Dauphin county. Whether any of them ever came to Nanticoke to reside is not known. Fell and Hancock re- sided in Wilkes-Barre, and died there; Hide lived in Hanover, re-
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HISTORY OF HANOVER.
moved to New York State about 1811; Felch lived in Huntington township; Steele resided in Hanover till his death in 1823.
These town lots were all on William Stewart's lot No. 27 on the end of it beginning at the Nanticoke Creek and extending south- ward about three hundred rods. The lot was forty-two rods wide. The present older part of Nanticoke stands in the same place.
Ferries were established from the very earliest times. There was an absolute necessity for them. There was one at Nanticoke, one at the Stewart Place and one at Steele's, as it was afterwards called. It is possible that this last one was not established before Steele kept it about 1789 or 1790. A road was laid out to this Ferry from the River Road, April 13, 1778. This road was made expressly for the purpose of getting to the ferry. The Steele family came about 1790. This seems to have been the only ferry where the ferrymen lived on the Hanover side of the river.
"Course and Distance of a road laid out in Hanover between William McKarrachan's lot (No. 18) and ye Public Lot (No. 2g)- Beginning at ye river, at a marked box wood tree, running south 21° (E.), 121 rods, by marked trees and stakes until it joins ye first great road at a marked black oak, and is allowed to be six rods wide and to lay south-west of said marked trees.
"Dated April 13, 1778. Voted and accepted by ye town and ordered to be recorded.
"JOHN JENKINS, "NATHAN DENISON, Select
"CHRISTOPHER AVERY, Men."
"WM. McKARRACHAN.
When we came under Pennsylvania jurisdiction this road shrank from six rods wide to two.
The two great roads running from Wilkes-Barre west through Hanover that had been laid out under Connecticut jurisdiction six rods wide shrank to three. What magnificent roads the township would have had if these wide roads had been maintained! Plenty of room 'for sidewalks and shade trees along both sides with- out in any way injuring the cultivated grounds on either side. All main roads and cross were of the same width-six rods. There is no ferry and no road there now, but there is a house there yet, and the bars at the River Road can be taken out and a wagon can drive down to the house or the river, (1885).
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CHAPTER IX.
FIRST SETTLEMENTS.
OW, without regard to chronological order, we must go back to the first coming of settlers in order to describe the conditions of things. Until 1771 there was no peace, or security for life or property, yet new men were constantly appearing and taking the places of those that became disabled or discouraged. After 1771 new settlers were constantly coming in and it was necessary to have their township organized and ready to enforce any such legal authority as they had assumed to themselves by per- mission or direction of the Susquehanna Company. This township organization has been sufficiently explained in previous pages.
The first settlements were made on the highest places on the flats, or in the woods close to the edge of the flats. In the latter case and in some of the former, the trees and brush had to be cleared away before a house could be built. Some portions of the flats had been cleared by the Indians-or at least were without trees-and had been cultivated by them for ages before the white people came. Of course land could not be very well cultivated by implements made of sticks, and stones, and bones, and horn, but nothwithstanding the crudeness of their implements, the Indians cultivated at this time here and up in the country of the Six Nations, "corn, beans, potatoes, pease, turnips, squashes, pumpkins, cucumbers, water-melons, tobacco, apples, peaches, and all kinds of vegetables."* In the old cultivated spots the land was at once ready for tillage. These spots were only on the flats, and though there was considerable of it ready for cultivation there was not nearly enough for the forty proprietors-or thirty-six-with their con- stant increase by new settlers. There were Indians still in posses- sion of some of these places and they were not molested or dis-
*Journal of Major Hubley, with Sullivan's expedition.
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HISTORY OF HANOVER.
turbed. The Indians had mostly left for other parts after the mas- sacre of 1763 and had not returned before the white settlers came this second time for settlement.
The lands had to be surveyed after the settlers came. Lots could not be drawn till after the surveys were made and up to 1771 the surveys and allotments had not been made. The people here previous to this time as well as afterwards, had to support them- selves either by the chase, or fishing, or the cultivation of the soil, or all together, and, as in other settlements, the labor performed was all in common and-for the general good, and its products were not subject to private ownership. This ended now, the land was allotted, and every man was left to his own exertions for his own livelihood .. Our present certified lots on the certified township maps are very nearly the same as the old Connecticut surveys., The numbers of divisions and the numbers of the lots are the same now as those of. 1771-2 to 1776 and 1787. (See the map).
The land on the flats was very rich and productive. It was only necessary to plant the seed and keep down the weeds to produce- what seemed to the settlers-magnificent crops. The earth was soft and easily cultivated with a hoe, without plowing, as was evi- denced by the Indian cultivation. The flats were overflowed nearly every year by the melting snows and the rains in the spring of the year up the river and were enriched by the materials these floods deposited, so, as in our time, never to need any other fertilizer for ordinary farm crops. Where the ground was already cleared, the first thing planted seems to have been apple seeds. A nursery was prepared at once where the ground would permit and the seeds planted. Wherever they saw a chance for an apple tree to grow, even in the woods, they planted seed, especially near a spring. The trees in the woods near a spring were frequently cut away, so that apple seeds, and probably peach stones, could grow, though the writer never saw any peach trees in such a place. They also planted artichokes, because they were perennial and needed no cultivation, grew like a weed, were difficult to destroy, and would always produce food.
The dense woods came down from the mountain-some three or four miles distant-over the hills and across the valleys to the very edge of the flats and covered, also, part of the flats, leaving
185
HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
only those parts of the flats open that the Indians had probably at some time cultivated. Much more than half the trees in these woods were of the various varieties of oak. There were also hickory, chestnut, yellow and white pine in abundance. Many of the trees were very large, the white pine overtopping all the rest, the next in height being the shell-bark hickory. Trees could fre- quently be found three to four feet in diameter, but five feet was very unusual. It is doubtful that a tree ever grew in these woods to six feet in diameter. As none of these trees grow so slowly as to produce a ring less than one-sixteenth of an inch in thickness, it follows then that a tree of six feet could not be more than 576 years old. But we know now, by actual experience, that in woods as thick and dense as they will grow, these trees will grow to a foot in diameter in less than 50 years. So probably no tree was ever found in Wyoming Valley as old as five hundred years. Trees growing as closely together as they will by nature, as they grow older and larger, crowd each other and some die out while young, others live and send their tops skyward while their side branches are killed off by the closeness of their neighbors, and as they have no chance or room to spread out sidewise they all grow upward together. Now, it is a slow tree that grows in height less than a foot a year, but where must be the top of a tree that grows only six inches in a year, after it has grown only 300 years? About 150 feet high, and that is about the height of our very tallest white pines. Then there is too much height for the body and the winds break them off, -- oak and hickory as well as pine. Of such as shed their leaves every fall, limbs have been broken off or killed out as they grew and have rotted down to the trunk of the tree and made a hole, into which the rains send water, and in the course of time the whole heart of the tree, from that rotten limb to the root, has been rotted out. Now, how short a time before that tree falls and decays and others take its place? Thus were the woods constantly dying tree by tree and being renewed, the whole accelerated by forest fires hastening the destruction of the dying trees. Thus it will be seen that a tree 300 years old was probably a rarity in our woods.
The woods reached unbroken for sixty miles towards the near- est settlements, south-east to Stroudsburg, nearly south to Bethle- hem and Easton and south-west to Shamokin-Sunbury-the near- 12*
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186
HISTORY OF HANOVER.
est being about sixty miles off, and all of them under a state juris- diction hostile to these settlers, and in the north and west about the same distance to numerous savage Indians, who, if not hostile now, were far from being safe neighbors.
There were no roads to this valley when the first settlers came, nor even paths in the beginning from the east, for three or four years after settlement was made. To get here they could not come in wagon or cart. They did not in fact in the beginning immigrate here with horses and wagons, oxen and carts. There were no paths for more than sixty miles, through dense forests over steep and rocky hills and mountains, but only a course marked out for them by large marks on the sides of the trees where a piece of bark had been cut out by the axe, "blazed," as it was called, by guides sent ahead, or sent on some time before to mark the way. They had to make the paths as they came and drive or lead their horses and cattle and sheep and hogs, with packs on the backs of everything that could carry a pack, whether man or beast, large or small, old or young, male or female, during all these years ; for some provisions, clothing ammunition, weapons, tools, seeds and many other neces- sary things had to be brought along. There were no drones among them. Tramps did not colonize, if there were any tramps then. For three or four years of the first or early settlement of the valley, the head of the family generally-not always-came first in the spring, drew his land by lot, cleared up ground on the flats where it was not already cleared-(old Indian clearings)-built a house, fenced his clearing, planted such crops as were proper for the season and for the case, and then in the fall returned to Con- necticut, his home, staid through the winter preparing for the move to his new home in the spring. In the spring he brought his family and made as permanent a settlement as he could, for in this case in Hanover and all Wyoming Valley, almost invariably when the immigrants arrived here in the spring he found his house and fences burnt, and his crops destroyed as nearly as they could be by the Pennamites or Indians. Then commenced the work of driving off the destroyers, rebuilding his house, his fences, plowing and planting, and all with the family on hand to starve or not as the case might turn out. All his last year's work except the clearing, had to be done over again, and in the meantime nothing for him-
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HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
self and family to eat. His neighbors were all like himself, with their houses all burnt and their crops destroyed. Game was plenti- ful in the dense woods that came close to their houses, and they did not have far to go to find it. Ammunition was not abundant with them, but was scarce, and it was uncertain how soon it would be badly needed to protect themselves and families from hostile savages. All the ammunition they had for years was what they could carry on their own persons for the year's use. Of course it had to be used with the greatest economy and care. When it was found necessary to get more ammunition-as they had no money to buy with-they would load a horse or two, on home-made pack- saddles, with the choicest "peltries," and send a man or two with them to the nearest market for such furs, and there trade them off for the desired powder and lead. This was during the troublous times, and while they all had to act in concert, and nearly every- thing they had was in common.
This pack-saddle business grew, and in a few years became a fine business, and was not confined to any particular kind of mer- chandise but reached to everything that would pay for the time and expense put upon it, and it increased. Roads and wagons soon superseded the pack-saddle, however.
What kind of a house of logs could one man build alone? He could not hire any one to help him; he had no money nor other property to pay with, and they were all situated like himself and needed a house at once. He had to produce his own food and that of his family, when they were with him, at the same time that he did this work. It seems to us now that they must have come near starving. The whole thing seems impossible. They could help one another some, and did, but the work was mainly done by the proprietor alone. He selected the place on his land where he wanted his house to stand, cut down the trees and prepared the ground for the house to stand on, cut other trees in the vicinity, as near the place as possible, and cut off such lengths as he needed for his house. He could roll together, near the site of his proposed house, logs enough of say eighteen or twenty feet long for the ends of his house, and thirty or forty feet for the sides, and enough of them to lay up to the eaves, or higher if he liked, and these would make, under the circumstances, a pretty good sized house. Bark
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HISTORY OF HANOVER.
about four feet long was peeled off the proper kinds of logs to be used in the place of shingles; for it must be understood, that these first settlers had no nails. They could not carry them, nor the iron to make them of. So they could not nail on shingles if they had them, and they had no tools then to make them with. Cut nails were not then known. All nails were made by the blacksmith, as was also every other iron thing used. Now, as the settlers had no tin, tiles, straw, slate nor shingles, nor any tools to make them with, he was compelled by necessity to use bark for roofing his house. He was only a farmer, but he had to be a builder here at that time. The writer having himself seen such a house in a new settlement, may be allowed to try to describe it. It is possible that the time may come when such a "cabin" will be entirely unknown and unthought of, and such a description may then be the only record of it.
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